Pitchers Batting, a Chart
by Matthew on Jan 27, 2009 7:00 AM PST
in Seattle Mariners Stats
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PrintPS: I imagine Matthew will come along shortly with pitcher hitting WAR for everyone not named Zambrano.
How right you are.
I modified Graham's numbers just a bit, calculating the average level from 2008 data only, which raised the wOBA up to .172.
Please do not fall into the easy trap of thinking of this in terms of replacement level. We attempted to proxy the replacement level for a pitcher's hitting ability in order to find a proper positional adjustment. After that, it's the standard hitting WAR calculations used for anyone else. To re-state something Tango has mentioned:
WAR is offensive wins above AVERAGE, defensive wins above AVERAGE, a positional adjustment, and then we apply wins above replacement (at a league level).
The end values [Wins added] presented here are the results of the pitcher's offensive wins (above average [BRAA] ) added to their positional adjustment + replacement level ( [Pos. Adj.] which comes from their average wOBA compared to the league as a whole, an implied ranking which I think does a decent enough job of estimating replacement level).*
Does that make sense? To me it does. There is a great comment made by Dave Cameron (reprinted here) that talks about positional adjustments in terms of selecting a baseball team out of, say 100, people trying out. It went along the lines of saying that the first thing you would do would be determine who could handle catching, and that might be some 10 people. Then you'd separate out those that had the skills to play shortstop and that might be 15 people, and so on and so forth. In reality though, the actual first thing you would do is separate the groups into two; those that can pitch, and those that cannot.
A pitcher's hitting has been, to my knowledge, overlooked so far and the spread in values between say Carlos Zambrano and Ben Sheets (two whole wins!) is significant enough to call this a gross negligence on our part. Of course, this wouldn't be an issue at all if the National League adopted the DH.
Point of interest: Felix Hernandez was the 15th best hitting pitcher by value last year, generating an extra 3.2 runs with his two plate appearances.
*The more clever among you might note that we are still missing a defensive value for pitchers' fielding prowess.
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The way I see it
Give Felix 600 PA and the division is pretty much ours
Felix would hit a grand slam every time he's up
even with no one on base
by seattlebruin on Jan 27, 2009 8:13 AM PST up reply actions
Felix hurts the team by not hitting enough Grand Slams
I was at Shea for the Felix-Slam!
Personal M's record: 5-4.
by EnglishMariner on Jan 27, 2009 9:26 AM PST up reply actions
If he can hit a grand slam with his eyes closed
He’d probably hit at least a seven run home run every time with his eyes open.
I just spent 15 minutes opting to search for that USSM article rather than get ready for work
yet I can’t find it either.
I know, I just figured if anyone's looking for the original, there it is.
Somewhere in the comments. It was a good discussion.
I can't imagine that pitchers field enough to have more than a 2-3 run gap between the best and worst over the course of a season
*The more clever among you might note that we are still missing a defensive value for pitchers’ fielding prowess.
unless you’re talking about some aberration like the 2006 Tigers
All the FPF in the world doesn't make a difference
if Jeff Weaver strikes out 9 batters in the deciding game.
by JI on Jan 27, 2009 8:37 AM PST up reply actions
Fielding Pitcher's (I can't find a synonym for practice that begins with F)
by JI on Jan 27, 2009 9:19 AM PST up reply actions
Fuckups works in the Tigers' case.
It's hard to convince people to let you eat them if you're an asshole. - Thingray
PMR calculations quoted at Beyond the Boxscore suggest that the spread is close to 20 runs a season between the best and worst
You can’t seriously expect me to believe that there’s a 2-3 run difference between Greg Maddox and K-Rod. One acts as a 5th infielder, the other might as well not even be there.
I think the key point about pitcher defense is that while the number of playable “balls in zone” is very low compared to other positions, almost none of them are routine plays that every pitcher will make— precisely because of the existence of players like K-Rod. By contrast, second basemen get a ton of balls, but every single MLB second baseman will make plays on ~68% of them.
Many years from now, when his name's recalled
Everyone will say, "He should have passed the ball"
-- Al Stewart, "Football Hero"
I had a nice long response drawn up but you got to my point
I’m just not seeing how there’s that many balls hit in the pitcher’s zone over the course of a year
by seattlebruin on Jan 27, 2009 12:17 PM PST up reply actions
And some of the balls that get by a pitcher are routine plays for a MINF.
Pitcher’s fielding defense seems quite a difficult proposition.
That's what I'm thinking
plus, the way I was originally imagining it, the majority of balls that are the pitchers responsibility would be sacrifice bunts, which should be ~an automatic out
by seattlebruin on Jan 27, 2009 12:22 PM PST up reply actions
And then of course you'd run into the problem where in the NL, bunts often come from the pitchers,
who are probably slower runners and much less likely to leg out a sac bunt for an infield hit, which would seem to make NL pitchers look that much better
by seattlebruin on Jan 27, 2009 12:23 PM PST up reply actions
I don't know...
It’s certainly a tricky issue, but if you look at Greg Maddux, his career numbers according to bb-ref are 3.13 plays per 9 innings against a league average of 1.82 plays per 9 innings. Over 200 IP, that’s 29 plays above average. Even figuring that there are a whole bunch of caveats, those are his career numbers, and it seems like he could have had some +4 or +5-run seasons sprinkled in there (since he’s not going to be perfectly consistent), and that there could be some -4 or -5-run pitchers that come along every now and then.
I wouldn’t bet the house on it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the difference at the far extremes is more like 8-10 runs and the difference between more typically very good and very bad pitchers would be 4-5 runs. It seems like it would be hard, but with enough BIP data and time, I think someone could figure it out.
The question is really whether plays made by a pitcher correlates to runs saved in the same vein as infielders
I’d be inclined to say otherwise, because a lot of the chances pitchers miss get recovered by the middle infielders.
by Graham MacAree on Jan 27, 2009 12:31 PM PST up reply actions
I'm thinking you'd have to weigh bunts/dribblers
that the other IFs couldn’t field and hard hit balls through the box.
Also, how would popups in the middle infield work?
They’re in the pitchers zone, obviously, does he lose credit when the third baseman comes stumbling across the mound to make the play (yes, I know, it’s stupid, but it happens)
by seattlebruin on Jan 27, 2009 12:34 PM PST up reply actions
Don't the other infielders almost always take those?
It seems like pitchers only catch pop-ups if absolutely no one else can make them.
Which is really stupid
pitchers should field their position
by seattlebruin on Jan 27, 2009 12:41 PM PST up reply actions
You don't want the fragile little snowflakes to pull a muscle
They already hurt themselves doing everything from sleeping on their arms funny to chewing steak too hard, the last thing you want is to give them more opportunities to have boo boos.
don't forget
the living hell that is the hangnail.
Nice Guys Finish Third - Hopelessly lost, but makin' good time.
At 3.13 plays/9, that would add up to a hell of a lot of chances over the course of a season, no?
I’m starting to think I was very, very wrong about my original statement
by seattlebruin on Jan 27, 2009 12:43 PM PST up reply actions
This is where BIP data would be important
Knowing the direction, speed, and type of hit, you could say on average how often a ball would be fielded by another infielder.
What gets me is the sheer magnitude of Maddux’s plays above average. Just as a rough estimate, even if we halve it, saying that part of it is due to his BIP distribution, and then halve it again, saying that other infielders would get some of those plays or something, and then only give him 1/3 run per play because again some plays would be made by other fielders and we’re talking mostly about singles here, Maddux would still be 2.4 runs above average for his entire career. And with some variance from season-to-season, it does seem like he could have some +4-5-run seasons to me.
The other thing is that on the negative side, if a pitcher throws the ball away a lot, those are going to be very costly errors (the difference between a nearly automatic out and a double), so I’m not 100% sure that it’s entirely fair to discount pitchers’ plays all the way to 1/3 of a run or so.
Interesting
I didn’t check the stats before I tossed that number out there.
Also, how much of Maddux’s plays made do you think can be attributed to being in the NL for his whole career? He probably has fielded a lot more bunts than say, Mike Mussina over the course of his career
by seattlebruin on Jan 27, 2009 12:33 PM PST up reply actions
That should be largely reflected in the league average rate, no?
Maddux’s career lgRF9 is 1.82 and Mussina’s is 1.70, suggesting that AL pitchers indeed get fewer chances on average. (Mussina, btw, is only at 1.84 RF9.)
I'm just thinking that if you try to leverage this for all of MLB, you're going to mess up the data because NL pitchers get more chances
and it would seem logical that those extra chances are fairly “easy” chances (I could throw out CC Sabathia running out a sac bunt without too much trouble)
by seattlebruin on Jan 27, 2009 12:40 PM PST up reply actions
Imagine that a pitcher is perfect and hits a HR in every at bat.
But, his ERA is one million.
Then, wouldn’t that pitcher’s bat be worth nearly zero wins?
This is obviously extreme, but basically what I’m saying is — since pitchers are unique in that they only have at bats when they are pitching, might their pitching stats affect their hitting worth?
Essentially this is asking what effect a pitcher has on the run environment and how that distorts the value of the batters
I have to imagine that if Lincecum put up the same batting line as Zambrano in 2008, his bat would have been worth more – it takes less runs to win a game that Timmy starts than it does for one of Zambrano’s.
I’m convinced that there’s an something here, but I’m not sure about how large it would be.
by Graham MacAree on Jan 27, 2009 12:24 PM PST up reply actions
It seems like what you are saying...
…is that, for a hitter in general, the value of his hits depend on the run-scoring environment. And that for pitchers in particular, their run-scoring environment differs from that of their teammates.
I would agree with that, but you’d probably have to be on the extremes for it to matter very much.
Of course, there's the problem that, even given 32 starts/year...
…this hypothetical 1 million ERA pitcher would get like, 3 PA max. He’s never make it out of the first inning, and would only get to bat if he was on the away team and they went through the entire lineup in the first inning.
by Terminator_X on Jan 27, 2009 12:30 PM PST up reply actions
Actually
He’d probably get something like 15-20 PA, since if you’ve got a guy who hits a HR literally every time up, you’re batting him in one of the top-3 spots in the order.
by Terminator_X on Jan 27, 2009 12:31 PM PST up reply actions
If I imagine that
then I follow it up by imagining said pitcher being converted to another position.
by The Ancient Mariner on Jan 27, 2009 12:38 PM PST up reply actions
Not sure--they've tended to end up in the OF
Why waste the throwing arm, after all?
by The Ancient Mariner on Jan 27, 2009 2:39 PM PST up reply actions
With a 1 million ERA, either his control is terrible (in which case, let him DH)
or he throws nothing but meatballs (which is exactly what fielders would want).
I like using semi-colons; they make me feel smart.
Control's a fine-tuning issue
Just because you walk guys doesn’t mean you can’t make the throw from RF.
by The Ancient Mariner on Jan 27, 2009 6:45 PM PST up reply actions
I wonder If going to the AL could help both Zambrano and Sheets
Going to the AL for Sheets would help him by about 1/2 a win because he’d never have to hit again.
Zambrano could hypothetically DH in every game he wasn’t pitching and the team could give up the DH so that Zambrano could pitch in games he started. That would give him almost a full season worth of at bats. His value last year from hitting was worth around 1.5 wins (from the posted spreadsheet) which is so large because pitchers are so bad. If instead we consider the case where he can hit almost every day but is compared against the DH instead of pitchers his hitting is worth around 2 wins because he would be roughly an average DH. That means Zambrano would be around 2 wins better off going to the AL.
Am I crazy/wrong or would Zambrano and Sheets both benefit from going to the AL by about 0.5 wins?
The main problem I see with the Zambrano arrangement...
…is that he probably isn’t that good of a hitter. He’s got a career .270 wOBA and has been ~26-27 runs below average over about 500 PA. So unless you know that he would improve to average with more reps or something, then he wouldn’t be an average DH.
Last year was by far his best year offensively.
Yes
As a hitter Zambrano would go from a .400 OPS talen base to a .750 OPS talent base.
by JI on Jan 27, 2009 8:07 PM PST up reply actions
That's assuming that seeing him more often won't get people to scout him better,
and then he’ll get worse pitches to hit.
I’m not saying everyone throws him meatballs because he’s a pitcher, but you have to assume that they don’t look for tendencies and weakness from him as they do a normal hitter, as you probably only see him 4AB per series.
It's hard to convince people to let you eat them if you're an asshole. - Thingray
"Talent Base" is reffering to the difference between pitchers and DHs
It basically subtracts ~25 runs from his value in positional adjustment.
Ben Sheets is quite possibly the least athletic person in professional sports.
Not only is he one of the worst hitting pitchers ever, he’s also worth something like -40 runs/4000 oppurtinities by PMR. If memory serves me correctly, he was something like -5 over the course of last season by PMR (and that’s not adjusted for low opportunities, that’s actually -5 runs).
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